The percentage of Babson survey respondents — academic officers of all sorts — who pegged online learning as a key part of their institutions’ long-term strategy fell from 69.1 percent in 2012 to 65.9 percent last year.

That plummeting percentage, according to the report, is in large part thanks to schools that have not launched far-reaching online offerings, and now don’t plan to in the coming years.

“Institutions with online offerings remain as positive as ever about online learning, but there has been a retreat among leaders at institutions that do not have any online offerings,” said Jeff Seaman, co-author of the much-anticipated report that premiered in 2003.

The survey also captured the polarized views of online education’s quality when compared to the traditional classroom model. Officials from colleges with no web-based class offerings have consistently held the most negative views of the online model.

The report’s authors wrote that they weren’t sure if schools with the biggest online offerings held positive views because of their exposure to the nontraditional model, or if the positive views led to greater online class adoption.

Despite the negative views from institutions without online courses — mostly private campuses — the inevitability of massive online course adoption was reflected in the Babson survey numbers: nine in 10 respondents said it was likely or very likely that every college student would be taking at least one web-based class by 2018.